Sophia Michaels
Pa Onakoya, the father of Nigerian chess master, Tunde Onakoya, has revealed that he wasn’t initially in support of his son playing chess.
He admitted that when Tunde was a child, he used to disrupt his chess games to make him focus on his education.
The proud father disclosed this in a sideline interview with City Edge TV when he joined his wife and many others at Lagos airport on Wednesday, to give the Guinness World Record-breaker a heroic welcome.
He said, “To me, Babatunde Onakoya is an angel because whatever he set his mind on you must succeed.
“As a small child, when Tunde was playing chess, I usually packed everything away from him because I wanted him to focus on school. I didn’t know that it was what would made him popular like this.
“My advice for parents is that they shouldn’t to discourage their children from their passions. I wanted Tunde to be a doctor but I didn’t know that chess would make him popular like this. I thank God.”
Tunde Onakoya recently broke the Guinness World Record for the longest-ever chess marathon with a time of 60 hours at Times Square in New York, United States.
He broke the record of Norwegian players, Hallvard Haug Flatebø and Sjur Ferkingstad, who played for 56-hour, 9-minute in 2018.
